Udacity: Bridging the cybersecurity skills gap

It’s 2018 and we live in a world which is networked together 24 hours a day, 365 days a year; a network that covers anything from internet banking to assisting the government infrastructure. Faced with a growing number of cyberattacks, as well as a fast-evolving threat landscape, organisations are bolstering their security readiness to combat the challenge.

The problem is that this has created an exponential demand for skilled cybersecurity experts across the globe – a demand which is fast outpacing the supply. Various industry studies estimate a talent shortage of 1.8 million to 3.2 million within the cybersecurity domain by 2021.

Udacity says its recently launched cybersecurity Nanodegree
program will help aspiring professionals to take advantage of this unparalleled
opportunity. The program has been created in collaboration with Chronicle
Security, a former product of X Development LLC, and also features
contributions from leading security experts at Facebook, Microsoft, Visa and
VMware. These include Mike Wiacek (co-founder & CSO – Chronicle), Aanchal
Gupta (director of security – Facebook), Ashish Jaiman (director of
cybersecurity – Microsoft), Swapnil Deshmukh (senior director of cybersecurity
– Visa), Wael Ghandour (lead security engineer – VMware), and Ariel Kirson
(security development lifecycle executive).

On the launch, Ishan Gupta, managing director India, Udacity, says “Cybercrime has become a global menace today and is exceptionally threatening given the growing digital interconnectivity between our devices, networks, and lives. Cybersecurity is no longer a luxury but has become the need of the hour. Adequately protecting themselves against a dynamic and constantly evolving threat landscape, however, will require organisations to hire skilled cybersecurity professionals. This is the skills gap that we aim to address with our Cybersecurity Nanodegree program.”

Highlighting some more benefits, Udacity acknowledge that its latest Nanodegree combines Chronicle’s bleeding-edge expertise at applying planet-scale computing and analytics to security operations with Udacity’s agile and dynamic learning platform. This combination is said to provide learners on the platform with an efficient, pathbreaking, and unparalleled skilling opportunity which will help them capitalise on the rapidly growing demand for skilled cybersecurity professionals and accelerate their career growth.

Udacity’s Cybersecurity Nanodegree program is designed to deliver broadly-applicable skills valued across a wide range of domains and industries. The program curriculum is split into six courses comprising seven projects, spread over two three-month terms. From fundamental knowledge about Python, networking, cloud architecture, APIs and more, to advanced skills pertaining to AuthN/AuthZ frameworks, VMs, serverless computing, and threat modelling, the program provides learners with the skills they need to build, operate, and secure cloud platforms. The final capstone project course teams up learners into two teams of attackers and defenders to learn how to attack and defend a cloud production environment.

Udacity will also provide video classes, programming
exercises, and hands-on projects throughout the program to further help
learners to fully absorb critical cloud-native security concepts and embrace a
security-first mindset. Succeeding in the program will require learners to have
intermediate Python experience and a basic understanding of Linux and
networking.